Ignore the warnings from my doctor over its main components — flour, sugar, and oil — they only make me yearn for doughnuts more. Scoff if you will, upper-crust gourmand, but twice in my recent life I have had near-mystical experiences partaking of fried dough goodness.
The first was on the sunrise banks of the Mississippi at New Orleans’ Café Du Monde, where a beignet and café au lait turns timid tourists into superheroes. More surprisingly, in San Francisco’s tiny, excellent Ton Kian dim sum restaurant, a friend urged me to bite into a crispy globe of fried flour that yielded an unexpected air burst of orange-tasting perfume. Maybe that level of exquisite sinker dining isn’t available in the Santa Barbara area, but there are treasures to be found.
What about “real” doughnuts, you might ask first? You know, the ones American law enforcement are alleged to devour. Cake doughnuts do have a certain comfort-food genius, I admit: Chocolate-chocolate, glazed, and jelly-infused staples can satisfy hunger deeply, though the rush is quick to collapse. Better yet, they’re found everywhere, whether it’s a fine chain like Krispy Kreme or a hometown mom ’n’ pop. But my preferred ballpark is exotica drawn from world cuisines: rural America’s fried dough, Italy’s zeppole, Mexico’s churros, and even the Finnish munkki.